The Little Undine
by Feral Phoenix
Summary: ...who did not know how to shut up. Or in other words, the real version of the classic fairy tale, according to Nessiah. Because while Nietzsche is cute, she sure can be a pain when she puts her mind to it. [ending spoilers]


The Little Undine

(who did not know how to shut up)

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Yggdra-chan and company. Don't sue me plz kthx.

Everyone here, I presume, knows the story of the Little Mermaid. Cute aquatic heroine obsesses over humans. Fish-girl saves land boy. Fish-girl falls in love with land boy. Land boy goes off to do land boy things, leaving fish-girl heartbroken. Fish-girl goes to witch, who offers to give her legs and make her human except she has to give up her voice. Fish-girl agrees and turns human. Then, former fish-girl tries to get land boy back, but land boy decides to go with the witch instead. Former fish-girl cries. Depending on which version you go by, either that's all or we get a miraculous happy ending. Right?

…Well, sorry to bust your bubble, but that's not quite the way I remember it. Actually that's not at all the way I remember it. There was never a human boy, and never an evil witch either. Just me and one really talkative kid and nobody else home because of a stupid shopping trip… trust Walt Disney to mess everything up for the sake of drama.

Let's get one thing straight first: My name is Nessiah. Not Ursula. I am not a witch. I am not a sea hag. I am not _female. _I am an archmagus of Asgard, thank you very much, and _not a babysitter._

What do I mean, you ask? Maybe I ought to start from the beginning…

---

We were on vacation at a summer resort that year, I recall. I guess the queen and the emperor just wanted a break from the stress of ruling their respective countries, as they'd finally managed to hammer out an alliance between their forces—no easy task, considering the ugly war they'd barely put an end to. Either that or they wanted some privacy to get all lovey-dovey. Whatever the case, both of them decided to grab their closest friends from their armies and come to a secluded hot-spring resort to get some well-deserved R&R.

Now, I am not the biggest fan of summer. I get tired easily and irritated fast in extreme heat, bright light is painful to my weak eyes, and the heavy chains that have bound me for most of my life get really, really hot and uncomfortable after they've been in the sun for ten minutes or so. I would have preferred to stay indoors the entire time. But I was on Emperor Gulcasa's invitee list, and I swear, the guy just doesn't know how to take "no" for an answer. So I was dragged, _unwilling, _to this old wooden ex-shrine out in the sticks, absolutely certain this whole thing was going to be the most miserable so-called vacation of my life.

I was right.

My brilliant companions decided to throw out the staff for the duration of the stay for reasons of their own (I'm telling you, the emperor and the queen just wanted as few interruptions as possible). And because of that, within a few days of our arrival, we managed to clean out the pantry entirely.

Someone—I'm not entirely sure who—suggested that they make a trip to the local open market together. The idea caught on, and pretty soon almost everybody was ready to go. I, of course, declined. However, I wasn't alone.

One of the members of the queen's entourage was a twelve-year-old Undine by the name of Nietzsche. From a distance, sure, she's a cute kid: Big eyes, bright smile, pale hair pinned up in the heat. But close up, she never fails to get on my nerves—even when I'm in the best of moods. Because she just doesn't get the meaning of restraint, especially when it comes to conversation. Therefore, I try to avoid her as best as I can.

However, that day was especially hot, and Undines don't like heat any more than I do—their scales dry out and itch or something like that. So Nietzsche decided that she would rather stay inside, in the water, than go out with her friends.

I, of course, was unaware of this. As soon as the others had begun their talk of "Let's go shopping!", I had retreated into one of the bathing springs with a book, gotten into a corner of the pool, and sat there to read where a few shafts of sunlight could illuminate the pages for me. Due to an injury I received when I was younger, I'm nearly blind, and so books—my favorite thing in this otherwise useless and annoying world—can be difficult to decipher unless I have the proper balance of light (on the pages) and darkness (on me). The springs themselves were the one of the few places in the resort where I could actually settle down with a good page-turner, so naturally, that's where I went.

I was right at the good part of the latest novel I'd picked up when the door banged open and in came Nietzsche.

Normally, her entering a room meant me leaving it. However, I was sitting in the spring at the time. Meaning that my things were lying on the bank, and I was wearing nothing but my chains. And there was no way, as in Absolutely No Way, that I was going to get up and run away butt-naked in front of a _girl. _So I was pretty much stuck.

"Hi, Ness-chan!"

I groaned and headslumped into my book. I really hated it when people I wasn't friendly with called me that. "Go away."

She splashed into the water as if she hadn't even heard me. "Nietzsche hasn't seen much of you yet this vacation! This means we get to talk!"

_"Please. _Go away. I am trying to read." I held the book up and wiggled it in the air for her benefit.

"But that's all you've done since we got here, Ness-chan!" Nietzsche flapped her tail fin in the water, sending it splashing all over the place. I moved my book out of the way. Why, oh, why did I have to spend my precious alone time babysitting this annoying kid? "Are books that interesting? What's that one about? Nietzsche can't read human writing. It's hard! Maybe you can show Nietzsche some human writing sometime so Nietzsche can try to learn."

"If you're _so _interested in human things, go bother Queen Yggdra when _she _gets back. For the last time, _go away. _I'm _trying _to _read."_

But did our oblivious little Undine take notice of the fact that she wasn't wanted? Oh, of course not. She just kept chattering on at a thousand miles an hour.

I tried to ignore her and keep reading. Really, I did. Considering the stress and annoyance I was already under, my efforts to rise above my temper were nothing short of martyrdom. But after ten minutes of hearing her drone on and on and on, I couldn't take it anymore.

I dog-eared my page, laid my book down, and pulled my spellbook out from under my clothes, flipping through it to find the appropriate incantations. It took a few minutes—even with the help of the sunlight I could bear, I still had to squint and run through each section line by line—but at last, I found it.

"Look, you," I told Nietzsche. "I suppose if you won't go away, there's nothing I can do to _make _you leave. But as long as you're going to be in here, you're going to have to be _quiet." _I pointed at her with my left hand, laying my right fingers on the spell itself.

Nietzsche frowned at me. She tried to say something—maybe ask what I was doing—but although her mouth moved, she didn't make any sound.

I sighed, sinking blissfully into the gods-blessed _silence._

Nietzsche, of course, wasn't happy. She flailed and tried to yell and splashed water all over the room, but eventually, she gave up and left.

Well, it was her own fault for not being able to control that motormouth of hers for half a second.

I finished my book, then my bath, and left for my room to get some well-deserved sleep.

---

I was rudely awakened that evening by someone pounding on my door.

The "someone" turned out to be a not-very-happy Emperor Gulcasa, finally back from shopping, who told me off for hexing Nietzsche and ordered me to give her voice back. I, of course, protested my innocence and tried to explain myself. He didn't want to hear it, and marched me down to the room where a very sulky little Undine was sitting silently and pouting. I took off the hex.

Nietzsche was even more annoying than ever after that, but thankfully, everyone else decided that it wasn't a good idea to leave us alone after that.

The vacation ended after a few more weeks of torment. We went back to our respective countries—with the exception of the emperor and the queen, who decided that they wanted to elope instead—and lived life normally until the happy couple came back from their honeymoon.

A traveler from the Undines' nation arrived to greet them in the emperor's castle with congratulations and an interesting story.

"Did you hear? One of the Undine girls has been telling everyone the saddest story. They say she was cursed by an evil magician, and that if a brave hero hadn't saved her, she would never have been able to speak again…"

From where I sat at the side of the audience hall, I thought about correcting the man, but refrained from commenting. Stories grow through rumor, after all, and I would probably just get him even _more _confused. It would really be better for the truth to go unspoken, or so I believed at the time.

A few thousand years later, Disney bought the rights to the story and fiddled with it even more.

The rest, as they say, is history.

:owari (XD):


End file.
